Vlasov joined the Communist Party in
1930. Sent to China, he acted as a military adviser to Chiang Kai-shek from 1938 to November 1939.
Upon his return, Vlasov served in several assignments before being
given command of the 99th Rifle Division.
After just nine months under Vlasov's leadership, after an
inspection by Semyon Timoshenko,
the division was recognized as one of the best divisions in the
Army in 1940. Timoshenko presented Vlasov with an inscribed gold
watch, as he 'found the 99th the best of all. The historian John
Erickson says of Vlasov at this point that [he] 'was an up and
coming man. In 1940, Vlasov was promoted to major general, and on
June 22, 1941, when the Germans and their allies invaded the Soviet
Union, Vlasov was commanding 4th Mechanized
Corps.

Shortly
after the invasion began, Vlasov's corps retook Przemyśl, holding it for six days. As a lieutenant
general, he commanded the 37th Army near Kiev and escaped encirclement.
He then
played an important role in the defense of Moscow, as his 20th Army counterattacked and retook
Solnechnogorsk. Vlasov's picture was printed (along with
those of other Soviet generals) in the newspaper Pravda as that of one of the "defenders of Moscow".
Described by some historians as "charismatic", Vlasov was decorated
on January 24, 1942, with the Order of the Red Banner for his
efforts in the defence of Moscow. After this success, Vlasov was put in
command of the 2nd Shock Army of the
Volkhov Front and ordered to lead the
attempt to lift the Siege of
Leningrad -- the Lyuban-Chudovo Offensive
Operation of January-April 1942. Other forces (the Volkhov
Front's 4th, 52nd, and 59th Armies, 13th Cavalry Corps, and 4th and
6th Guards Rifle Corps, as well as the 54th Army of the Leningrad
Front) failed to exploit Vlasov's advances and his army was left
stranded in German-held territory. The 2nd Shock Army was
surrounded and, in June 1942, destroyed.

Defection

After Vlasov's army was surrounded, he himself was offered an
escape by aeroplane. The general refused and hid in German-occupied
territory; ten days later, on July 12, 1942, a local farmer
betrayed him to the Germans. Vlasov's opponent and captor, German general
Georg Lindemann, interrogated him about the surrounding of his army
and details of battles, then had Vlasov imprisoned in occupied
Vinnytsia.

Vlasov claimed that during his ten days in hiding he affirmed his
anti-Bolshevism, believing Stalin was the greatest enemy of the
Russian people. His critics, including Marshall Kirill Meretskov (who had endorsed Vlasov's
promotion to executive officer of the Volkhov front) and most
Soviet historians, argued that
Vlasov adopted a pro-Nazi German stance in prison out of
opportunism, careerism, and survival, fearing Stalinist retribution
for losing his last battle and his army.

German prisoner

While in prison, Vlasov met Captain Wilfried Strik-Strikfeldt, a
German Balt who was attempting to
foster a Russian Liberation
Movement. Strik-Strikfeldt had circulated memos to this effect
in the Wehrmacht.Strik-Strikfeldt, who had been a participant in
the White movement during the Russian
civil war, persuaded Vlasov to become involved in aiding the German
advance against the rule of Stalin and bolshevism. With Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Boyarsky, Vlasov wrote a memo
shortly after his capture to the German military leaders suggesting
cooperation between anti-Stalinist Russians and the German
Army.

Vlasov was taken to Berlin under the protection of the Wehrmacht's
propaganda department. There he, together with other Soviet
officers, began drafting plans for the creation of a Russian
provisional government and the recruitment of a Russian army of
liberation under Russian command.

Vlasov founded the Russian
Liberation Committee, in hopes of creating the Russian Liberation Army—known as ROA
(from Russkaya Osvoboditel'naya Armiya). Together with
some other captured Soviet generals, officers and soldiers, the
army's goal was to overthrow Stalinism and
create an independent Russian state. Vlasov offered a democratic
system of government. Many Russian POW as well as soldiers who received Vlasov
propaganda leaflets were interested in becoming a part of this
army.

In the spring of 1943, Vlasov wrote an anti-Bolshevik leaflet known as the
"Smolensk Proclamation", which was dropped from aircraft by the
millions on Soviet forces and Soviet-controlled soil.

Even though no Russian Liberation Army yet existed, the Nazi
propaganda department issued Russian Liberation Army patches to
Russian volunteers and tried to use Vlasov's name in order to
encourage defections—a strategy they found effective. Several
hundred thousand former Soviet citizens served in the German army
wearing this patch, but never under Vlasov's own command.

Vlasov talking to volunteers on
November 18, 1944

Adolf Hitler was very wary of Vlasov
and his intentions. On April 3, 1943, Hitler made clear in a speech
to his high command that such an army would never be created, then
issued directives to dismantle any such efforts and to sequester
all of Vlasov's supporters in the German army. He worried that Vlasov
might succeed in overthrowing Stalin, which would halt Hitler's
dreams of expanding Greater Germany
to the Urals.
Hitler began taking measures against Eastern Volunteer units,
especially Russian ones, arranging for their transfer to the
west.

Vlasov was
permitted to make several trips to Nazi-occupied Russia: most
notably, to Pskov, where
Russian pro-German volunteers paraded. The populace's
reception of Vlasov was mixed. While in Pskov, Vlasov dealt himself
a nearly fatal political blow by referring to the Germans as mere
"guests" during a speech, which Hitler found belittling.
Vlasov
was even put under house arrest and threatened with being handed
over to the Gestapo. Despondent about his mission, Vlasov
threatened to resign and return to the POW camp, but was dissuaded
at the last minute by his confidants.

Commander of the ROA

Vlasov with ROA soldiers

Vlasov's only combat against the Red Army
took place on February 11, 1945, on the river Oder. After three days of battle against
overwhelming forces, the First Division of the ROA was forced to
retreat and marched southward to Prague, in German-controlled
Bohemia.

On May 6,
1945, Vlasov received a request from the commander of the first ROA
division, General Sergei Bunyachenko, for permission to turn his
weapons against the Nazi SS forces and
aid Czech resistance fighters in
the Prague uprising. Vlasov
at first disapproved, then reluctantly allowed Bunyachenko to
proceed. Some historians maintain it was the bitterness of the ROA
against the Germans which caused them to switch sides once again,
while other historians believe the sole purpose of this action was
to win favor from the western Allies and possibly even the Soviet
side, in the light of the nearly completed military annihilation of
the German Reich.

Two days later, the first division was forced to leave Prague as
communist Czech partisans began arresting
ROA soldiers in order to hand them over to the Soviets for
execution. At this point Vlasov was offered an escape,
through changing into civilian clothes and flying to neutral
Spain, but he refused to leave his men.

Vlasov and the rest of his forces, trying to evade the overpowering
Red Army and wishing to preserve their ranks for a future war of
liberation, attempted to head west to surrender to the Allies in
the closing days of the war in Europe. On May 10, 1945, Vlasov and
his men reached western Allied forces and surrendered to
them.

Final days

Vlasov was taken into American captivity and
held in a city in Tyrol. He and his
generals continued talks with the British and the Americans,
explaining the principles of their liberation movement and trying
to persuade the western Allies to grant asylum to its participants.
The Allied commanders were divided on the issue; some were
sympathetic but afraid of angering the Soviet Union and of
disobeying their western Allied political leaders, who were still
in alliance with Stalin.

On May 12, 1945, returning from talks with an American captain
named Donahue, Vlasov's car was surrounded by Soviet troops.
Vlasov's American escort refused to resist as Vlasov was arrested.
Vlasov, along with many of his anti-communist Russian and other
men, was forcibly repatriated to
the Soviet Union, most to face execution, or internment in the
Gulag.

Soviet
authorities sent Vlasov to Moscow, where over the course of a year
he was held in the Lubyanka
prison. A summary trial held in the summer of 1946
and presided over by Viktor Abakumov
sentenced him and eleven other senior officers from his army to
death in what was deemed a show trial by
many non-Soviet observers. The twelve men were hanged on August 1,
1946. These were among the last death sentences in the Soviet Union
carried out by hanging (later a group of
Cossack leaders allied with the Germans,
including Pyotr Krasnov, Andrei Shkuro, and Helmuth von Pannwitz, suffered the same
fate).

Memorial

New York memorial

A
memorial dedicated to General Vlasov and the participants in the
Russian Liberation Movement was erected at the Novo Deveevo Russian
Orthodox convent and cemetery in Nanuet, New York. Twice annually, on the anniversary of
Vlasov's execution and on the Sunday following Orthodox Easter, a memorial service is held for Vlasov and the
combatants of the Russian
Liberation Army.

Review of his case

In 2001,
a Russian
Federation-based social organization, "For Faith and
Fatherland", applied to the Russian Federation's military prosecutor for a review of Vlasov's
case. The military prosecutor concluded that the law of
rehabilitation of victims of political repressions did not apply to
Vlasov and refused to ever consider the case again personally.
However, Vlasov's Article
58 conviction for anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda was
vacated.